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Dr. Dennis Saver, with the Florida Academy of Family Physicians, endorses medical homes like the one Humana is trying here. /PB Post

Consider yourself lucky if you’re one of the Humana Medicare Advantage patients here.

If your doctor is with MetCare in Boca Raton, Jupiter, Wellington or Belle Glade, you’re among the first 8,500 Humana customers to experience what’s called a “patient centered medical home.”

The concept incorporates the best of new technology with the old-fashioned Marcus Welby-type doctor-patient relationship. It requires doctors and insurance companies to think differently, treating customers’ good health rather than just fixing their problems.

IBM’s director of healthcare transformation, Dr. Paul Grundy, is a huge advocate of the patient centered medical home system, and last summer I wrote about his quest to spread this care model here in Florida, where IBMs health care costs were out of control. Read the full story here.

Humana’s Mitch Lubitz likens medical home doctors to a quarterback who calls all the plays and tracks all the motion.

Medical home doctors make use of patient tracking software, ensuring details don't fall through the cracks. /PB Post

To be certified as a medical home primary care doctors, physicians must be accessible to their patients, with same-day or next-day appointments and email availability.

They must focus not just on treating episodes of illness, but on maintaining wellness, through cholesterol and weight management, exercise programs, nutrition education and such.

They must serve as the communication hub for their patient’s specialists and testing centers.

Prescriptions are handled electronically. Follow-up tests and test results aren’t allowed to fall through the cracks, thanks to patient-management software and extra staff to make sure there’s follow through.

Patients with costly chronic problems like obesity, diabetes, autoimmune-disease are treated in a way intended to maximize their good health, not just focus on their acute emergencies.

Lubitz said Humana rolled out this concept in Florida in the southeastern part of the state first.

Great initial results here have persuaded Humana to expand the program to the west coast, with physician partners at JSA Medical Group in Tampa.

In its first year here in Palm Beach County, MetCare’s medical home practices are seeing hospital readmission rates that are 33 percent lower than traditional Medicare readmission rates.

Their patient costs are lower for emergency room visits, hospitalizations, imaging and drugs.

Women were more likely to get mammograms, diabetic patients were more likely to have blood sugar in an optimal range and cholesterol levels lower.

Best of all, patients said they were happy, with 95 percent saying they’d recommend their doctor to a friend and 98 percent saying they were satisfied their MetCare staff listened to their concerns.

If you’re a MetCare Humana Medicare Advantage patient who is part of a medical home, tell us about your doctor. Are you happy with your care? What’s different?